Bricks, batts and bouquets: Swan needs a new sales pitch

As we wave our kids off to school for another year, many will be settling into spanking new school halls, the product of the Labor Government's GFC stimulus package.

The unprecedented Building the Education Revolution (BER) school building program – despite the grandiose name – was one of those initiatives that on paper looked like a rolled gold winner for Labor, delivering on two of its core brand strengths in creating jobs and resourcing education.

But before long, it became known as 'the school halls fiasco', sitting alongside pink batts and refugee boat arrivals in Tony Abbott's mantra of government incompetence.

This week's Essential Report gives the BER a mixed report card, but shows that voters with direct exposure to the program – parents of kids at school – grudgingly see its value.

Q. Overall, how would you rate the Federal Government's BER program to fund new school buildings which was introduced during the GFC?

Total

Vote Labor

Vote Lib/Nat

Vote Greens

Total with children at school

Children at primary school

Children at secondary school

Total good

30%

49%

17%

39%

43%

49%

38%

Total poor

31%

10%

50%

18%

27%

27%

26%

Very good

7%

15%

3%

5%

11%

12%

11%

Good

23%

34%

14%

34%

32%

37%

27%

Neither good nor poor

15%

21%

22%

27%

21%

17%

24%

Poor

15%

8%

20%

13%

12%

12%

11%

Very poor

16%

2%

30%

5%

15%

15%

15%

Don't know

17%

19%

11%

16%

10%

6%

12%

For a program that was critical in steering Australia through a global recession and delivered resources to thousands of schools nation-wide – this isn't a compelling response. It reveals a clear partisan divide – just 17 per cent of Coalition voters supporting the program compared to 49 per cent of Labor voters, reflecting the damaging political fight over the issue.

However it does show that parents – particularly those with children at primary school – are significantly more likely to support the BER program.

When parents with children at school are asked specifically whether the program benefited their kids' schools, the answer is positive.

Q. How much did the schools those children attend benefit from the Government's school building program?

Total

Vote Labor

Vote Lib/Nat

Children at primary school

Children at secondary school

A lot

19%

25%

16%

26%

15%

Moderately

30%

37%

31%

32%

29%

A little

23%

15%

33%

24%

22%

Not at all

12%

10%

11%

7%

17%

Don't know

15%

13%

9%

11%

17%

Seventy-two per cent of parents in total, and 82 per cent of children in primary school, believe their school has benefited from the program.

These results not only challenge the accepted wisdom on the BER – that it was poorly managed and wasteful – they raise questions about why an economic initiative that delivers on multiple platforms is so hard to sell.

Roll-out of the BER did attract many negative headlines. Arguments about media campaigning aside; it's impossible to deny that taxpayers' money spent on a school hall/canteen/covered outdoor learning area the wrong size/in the wrong place/for eight children is a cracking yarn – even though these cases were the rare exceptions among nearly 24,000 construction projects in the massive $16 billion program, which received an overall thumbs up from the independent Orgill report into its implementation.

Maybe it also comes down to the way the public debate on the economy is managed by all sides of politics.

To steal from the classroom, our economic debate is normally considered a question of maths. Performance comes down to figures - growth, unemployment, consumer confidence and the biggest indices of all, the big, bad budget deficit.

But behind these numbers there is also another set of indicators perhaps more suited to English – context, motivation, narrative – things that are harder to quantify but are critical to telling our economic story.

Listening to Treasurer Wayne Swan deal with his frustrations in selling the Government's economic achievements one feels like he is stuck on a maths equation. The numbers add up but he can't explain the working out.

Perhaps a broader telling of the Government's response to the first GFC – a decision to create jobs in areas where there would be a social impact as well as a jobs dividend – would help him in this regard.

In this re-telling, the use of stimulus money not only to improve the quality of our kids' educational facilities – but also (and despite the tragic deaths of contractors) to create more energy efficient homes, speaks to a government that sees economic management as something more than a set of figures.

Long-term US pollster Vic Fingerhut has a well-tested theory that regardless of performance, right-of-centre political parties will always win a dry debate on who is the better economic manager.

It is only when the context – in whose interest the economy is being managed – comes into the equation that progressive parties have a chance.

In this light, it might be time for the Treasurer to start talking about how the economic numbers are only indicators of a bigger story; a story in which ordinary people – school kids, teachers and construction workers; not interest rates and bond yields – are the real players. And the halls and the interactive whiteboards and even the (occasionally over-priced) school canteens are an important part of this story.

Peter Lewis is a director of Essential Media Communications (EMC). View his profile here. Jackie Woods is a communications consultant at Essential Media Communications (EMC). View her full profile here.

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